


Multitasking

by raz0rgirl



Category: Global Frequency
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-11-17
Updated: 2008-11-17
Packaged: 2017-10-02 05:28:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raz0rgirl/pseuds/raz0rgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Miranda and Aleph chat before a mission.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Multitasking

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the galpalficathon on LiveJournal. Explicit mention of events from issues 11 and 12.

Miranda adjusted her footing as sand shifted beneath her boots. She stood atop a large dune with the setting sun at her back, scanning a horizon filled only with sand as far as she could see. The bite of the cold filled her throat and chest with every inhale. Even the hottest deserts tended towards coolness when night came on. Takla Makan was always cold and dropped into true frigidity once the sun went down.

She'd spent time in nearly every country on the planet and had experienced most climates. She liked dry cold the least, and given the choice, she would have heeded the warning in the desert's name--the English translation was something like "you can get in but you can't get out"--and avoided it. But she went where the trouble was, and she didn't feel comfortable entrusting the lead on this mission to anyone else. Too many potential diplomatic pitfalls, and after the die-back close call in Chicago, she now had even less faith in governments not to have something monumentally stupid up their collective sleeves than she'd had before, even with her admittedly cynical baseline.

As it stood, the mission stretched the limits of the purpose of her organization. The Global Frequency existed to conduct acute rescues, not potentially extended operations as this one was turning out to be. But standing there--running a mental check of the ad hoc team she'd assembled, their positions and plan of action, eventualities and contingencies--took her back to her days as a government operative, and she felt herself falling into the familiarity of it.

Just as the sky fell into twilight dark, she was pulled out of her reverie by a brief chirp followed quickly by a question: "Don't you think it's time we got new phones for the Frequency?"

Aleph's voice in her ear, as full and intimate as if the woman had been standing there beside her instead of sitting in a secure room half a world away, came as close to startling Miranda as anything ever did, which granted, wasn't much. She was still getting used to the quality of the sound. It had been a long time since she'd been in the same room as the person she depended on to coordinate both her organization and their missions, and it was strange to hear her without the slight tinniness the aural filters of most communication devices inserted into everything. The new headset was as good as Aleph had told her it would be, and she was glad they had gone for the upgrade. Of course, she should have anticipated that Aleph wouldn't have stopped there.

"Don't you think there's a better time to have this conversation?" Miranda said, _sotto voce_, as she scanned the area for an uncounted time. She trusted that the miniscule mic, inconspicuous under the fall of her hair, was powerful enough to send her voice back to Aleph clearly even with her quiet tones.

"We're on an encrypted private channel, and the satellite feed shows you have a minimum of seven and a half minutes before the target will be in sight of your position unless they suddenly sprout wings or something," Aleph said. "The team's in place and all of our proverbial ducks are in their rhetorical row, so we should talk about this now. After the mission, you'll be too busy with after mission stuff."

Miranda couldn't argue with that. "Okay," she said. "Why do we need new phones?"

"Because our current ones are the size of my head, for one thing." Aleph said. "My personal phone is teeny and sexy--much like myself, in fact."

"We have perfectly functional phones, Aleph," Miranda said. "We don't need to replace a thousand phones because our current ones aren't 'sexy' enough. Not to mention the security upgrade headache."

"Ms Zero, for a woman with her finger on the pulse of, you know, everything, you're kind of old fashioned."

"I'm practical, Aleph," Miranda replied. "Why spend money we don't need to?"

"They're conspicuous and a pain in the ass."

"They're not that big. And we want to be conspicuous, remember? When we're conducting missions, it needs to be clear when people are on the Frequency for their safety as well as everyone else's."

"I've been thinking about this since the sewers. Seriously, an encrypted headset would have been nice for, you know, keeping my hands free to take out the bad guys. I don't know how field agents do it."

"We have headsets," Miranda said, exasperated. "I'm wearing one you picked out now."

"Which is great for missions when there's time to coordinate, but a viable hands free should be standard for Global Frequency phones. It would let us stay in more direct contact with even the most quickly emergent situations... And they'd look cool."

"Aleph..."

"There's also scaling to consider," Aleph continued, ignoring her interjection. "You can fit more features into smaller handsets, now. Our sat phones were amazing however many years ago, but things have advanced, and we need to upgrade. You can get better shit at the mall."

"That's a bit of an exaggeration, Aleph," Miranda said.

"It is," Aleph conceded, "but not by much. Look, I'm not big into e-waste, and yes, it will be a hassle to round up all phones, properly secure them, set up the new ones, properly secure them, and all that. But ultimately it will be worth it."

"Sure, until the next time you decide they aren't good enough."

"That's life in the Information Age, Ms Zero," Aleph said. "We have to keep up."

Miranda sighed. "I take it you have a model in mind."

"Several, actually. I'm thinking we take the best of several cutting edges and combine them into the cuttingest edge that ever was."

"'The cuttingest edge?'" Miranda repeated, chuckling.

"Hey, you come up with something better."

Miranda couldn't see her, but she knew Aleph was grinning. "Look, I'll consider..." Miranda began, but Aleph cut her off.

"Heads up," Aleph said. "Sheffield has high mag night vision line of sight on your bogeys. Processing the images now and comparing it with the satellite data. Switching to the team channel."

Her easy move back to the operation without missing a beat was demonstrative of Aleph's ability to track complex data from multiple sources while giving all of it equal attention. It was always impressive to see (and her abilities made for good parlor tricks), but it was during a mission in progress that she truly shined. _That's why you hired her_, Miranda thought with a smile as she scanned the scene in front of her one more time.

The waning moon was just a slip of crescent hanging no more than thirty degrees above the horizon, but the sky was rapidly filling with emerging stars, bright in a way only possible in a place as desolate as this. In the absence of artificial light, she could see the desert floor beneath her well enough that she knew Dunham, her sniper on this mission, would be able to see the drivers of the commandeered Desert Patrol Vehicles well enough to take them out if necessary.

Of course, if Khodaiji's plan worked out they wouldn't need to do any shooting, which was the ideal situation. They wanted the hostage alive and the contraband, which they'd taken to calling The Package, intact, especially because one the worst case scenarios involved The Package being compromised and them all dying of radiation poisoning. The absolute worst case involved these assholes getting away from them and forcing their hostage to use The Package to build a nasty bomb or two, which was of course unacceptable. So here they were.

Two lines of exhaust appeared behind dark shapes moving towards their position, and as if someone had thrown a switch on the world, everything around her went into sharp focus.

Even after having done this work for her entire adult life, she was still surprised by how quickly things could move once the action started. Khodaiji's trap sprang just after the shapes resolved into vehicles visible to the naked eye, with Sheffield indicating that the two vehicles had been caught in Khodaiji's experimental stun net. They'd managed to time it so that vehicles had driven right into the optically camouflaged webbing, and her team had been able to trigger the stun property of the net before their targets had time to react.

They needed to secure the prisoners, hostage and cargo. There was also the logistical matter of keeping everyone hydrated and warm enough until their transport out of there arrived. But all in all, after weeks of an intense search involving a 78 Global Frequency members tracking movements, accounts, and affiliations, they'd resolved the situation with no loss of life in fewer than ten minutes, thanks in no small part to Aleph's coordination work.

Over the cross chatter on the team channel, Miranda could hear Aleph confirming through information from the spy satellite she'd retasked for the mission and the readings Sheffield was sending back to her that The Package, while slightly hot, was unharmed.

"Nicely done, Aleph," Miranda said. "We'll talk about the phones in person next time I'm in your neck of the woods. See if you can have a prototype ready by then. I'll have time to get those breakcore white labels you wanted from 230, too."

"Cool," Aleph said. "I'll order in the pierogi you like. Now go take care of your after mission stuff so I can get some sleep. It's 6 in the morning here. I don't get up this early or stay up this late unless there's a party or a crisis involved, and the crisis is officially over."

Miranda laughed and started down the dune to join the rest of her team.


End file.
